The Oxford History of World Cinema

Vera), a hard-hitting, realistic exposé of working-class life
in the Soviet Union and the failed promises of Communism for its youth. Vera herself, a tough, wise-cracking,
yet touchingly vulnerable teenager, outstandingly played
by the newcomer Natalia Negoda, is the most memorable
and strongest female character in all of recent cinema.
(The film was scripted by Pichul's wife Maria Khmelik.)
Fifty million Soviets saw the film, most of them lured by
the first sex scene in Soviet cinema.

However, many of these contemporary social melodramas did not abandon Socialist Realism, but simply
turned it on its head. They were still formulaic 'message'
films trying to tell people how or how not to live, and are
full of new clichés: dirty, communal apartments instead
of shiny, clean ones, social outcasts instead of heroes of
labour, and a requisite unhappy ending instead of a happy
one.

Since 1991, film-makers have moved into a post-per-
estroika phase. After much self-exploration, and stylistic
and thematic experimentation in film, directors are
attempting to make more commercially viable films. Light
comedies and modest, feelgood films are making a comeback, after a flood of depressing dark films, pejoratively
labelled chernukha (black), bytovukha (grungy, everyday
life), and pornukha (porno). Vyacheslav Krishtofovich's Adam's Rib(Rebro Adama, 1991) typifies this new type of
film. It is a warm story, both humorous and touching, of
how three generations of women cope and survive in these
difficult times. The director relies on excellent acting (the
film stars the incomparable Inna Churikova) to help create
real characters the audience can identify with. Yuri Mamin
's A Window to Paris(Okno v Parizh, 1993) is a slapstick
tale of the improbable adventures of some simple Russians
who find a miraculous window to Paris in their run-down
apartment house in St Petersburg.

The mostly young 'new wave' film-makers reject all vestiges of Socialist Realism, or of socially redeeming cinema
with an educational or ideological message. They are a
diverse group: some embrace western cinema, the classics
of Hollywood as well as of Europe, the French New Wave,
for example, and the newer post-modern cinema of Peter
Greenaway and David Lynch. The guiding force of this
group is Sergei Soloviev, an established film-maker,
teacher, the director of his own studio (first at Mosfilm,
now independent). He is the mentor of the talented Rashid Nugmanov
, whose 1988 film The Needle (Igla) began the
Kazakh 'new wave' and will surely become a post-modern
cult classic, along with Soloviev's own Assa ( 1988). Other
directors are creating their own 'retro' films, ironic and
often nostalgic remakes of films from the Thaw or even
earlier Stalinist periods. Still others are trying to abandon
dialogue altogether in their rediscovery of silent, black
and white film.

It is impossible to describe in brief the variety and
vitality of the cinema since the beginning of glasnost,
despite regular complaints from critics that there are no
any good films. The abolition of censorship was clearly
beneficial, although at first it did confound older directors
who were used to fighting for their ideas. While financing
and production are shaky in this period of transition to
capitalism, films are being made and film-makers are
slowly adapting to a new western cost-consciousness. The
unsolved problem remains distribution-how to get at
least a few of the best films to the screen. In the mean
time there is not a little nostalgia for the days of Goskino
and the state-subsidized, state-run film industry.

For the studios of the southern republics, as in the rest of
the USSR, the Thaw that followed Stalin's death signified
a double rebirth. First, there was a noticeable return to
film-making after the 'era of few films 'when only Stalinist
masterpieces could be produced. It had been a particularly
dark period for these small studios: of just less than 290
full-length films produced in the USSR between 1945 and 1955, the five central Asian republics only produced nineteen and the three Trans-Caucasian republics only
produced twenty-two, twelve of which were from the relatively favoured republic of Georgia. This renewal of production assumed particular importance in two republics:

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